Jane O’Hara

Bio

Jane O’Hara has mounted solo exhibitions of her artwork at the South Rotunda Gallery, Hynes Convention Center, Boston and Gallery 55 in Natick, MA . Group exhibitions include Denise Bibro Fine Art, NYC; Flinn Gallery, Greenwich, CT and William Scott Gallery, Provincetown, MA. As both curator and artist, Jane is a Courage of Conscience Award honoree from the Peace Abbey which honors individuals and organizations that have distinguished themselves through humanitarian causes, peace and social justice activism.

Jane is an integral part of the Compassion Arts Festival. She has been a featured presenter of programs and lectures at Worcester Art Museum in Worcester, MA, NY’s Pace University, a benefit for Maple Farm Sanctuary, Mendon MA, a multimedia presentation of her paintings and the work of the artists of Beasts of Burden for the Compassion Arts and Culture & Animals Festival at Symphony Space in NYC, and recently at the Boston Veg Food Fest program series.

As part of the Curatorial Opportunity Program, Newton Art Center, MA, O’Hara curated the exhibition Beasts of Burden — first in Boston in 2014. She is founder of O’Hara Projects which provides the platforms for the body of work in Beasts of Burden, ranging from exhibitions to multimedia display. The evolving Beasts of Burden now has 18 artists who explore our complex relationship with animals. In 2017 the exhibition Beasts of Burden exhibited as a pop-up in NYC. Thanks to the Culture & Animals Foundation Grant, the book Beasts of Burden, Our Complex Relationship with Animals cataloguing Beasts of Burden was able to be published.

O’Hara’s work, both as painter, and as curator of Beasts of Burden, is centered on our schizophrenic relationship with animals. She uses surrealism and creates a narrative to point out how the animal condition poses a duality. Intrigued and disturbed by how our insensitivity to animals raised in captivity is at odds with the casting of human traits on our pampered pets, her paintings create an unnatural stage for the animals' situation to point out people's tendency to impose their own agenda.

Working in Little Compton, RI and West Palm Beach, FL, O’Hara lives with her husband, artist Gedas Paskauskas.

Courage of Conscience Award: The Peace Abbey, an interfaith organization committed to the study and practice of nonviolence, honors individuals and organizations that have distinguished themselves through humanitarian causes and peace and social justice activism, April 2015